The present invention relates to novel activators for percompounds, and more particularly, it relates to the use of a .alpha.-acyloxy-N-acylamides as activators for inorganic and organic compounds such as aqueous hydrogen peroxide and its addition products with organic substances such as urea and dicyclohexylamine, as well as mineral persalts such as perborate, percarbonates and perphosphates.
The action of aqueous solutions of percompounds used as bleaching and oxidizing agents becomes effective only at temperatures above 70.degree. C., and temperature of from 80.degree. to 100.degree. C. are preferable. The prior art describes a number of products showing properties useful as activators for percompounds. That is, they provide a more rapid oxidizing action or bleaching action than that which is usually observed, or alternatively, they develop this activity under milder temperature conditions than those which are necessary to obtain the activity in their absence. All of these compositions are characterized by the fact that they possess one or more perhydrolyzable functions.
In the area of bleaching, a certain number of activator compounds have been recognized for commercial development. The literature on this subject makes mention chiefly of poly-N hetrocyclic acetyls of the hydantoin, glycoluril, benzimidazole and diketopiperazine types. Nevertheless, this avenue of development has not been followed because these substances present major drawbacks in that they are unstable atmosphere moisture and are spontaneously hydrolyzed, thus rapidly destroying their value as activators.
Moreover, these products necessitate special precautions during storage, handling, and addition to the other ingredients, such as those, for instance, usually incorporated in detergent powders. Various solutions have been proposed to alleviate these deficiencies. Among these are coating, separate packaging, or addition of dessicants. Unfortunately, none of these methods is satisfactory. They pose technical difficulties in practical usage, and they considerably increase the cost of manufacture of the active material.
It can thus be appreciated that there is a considerable commercial need to provide percompond activators which will be stable over a period of time in the solid state under normal packaging and storage conditions.